The Missing Angel, Erle Cox [suggested reading TXT] 📗
- Author: Erle Cox
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in here?” he asked bitterly.
“Not at all,” she replied airily. “I did it in the hope that it would
land you in an everlasting mess with the police.”
“Thank you, Geraldine, for your kind thought and for your still kinder
intentions.”
“I trust I succeeded in my plan?” asked the icy damsel.
“Alas! Geraldine, you failed,” he jeered at her. “My native intelligence
saved me. But that does not lessen the debt of gratitude I owe you.”
“What a pity,” she sighed. “I hoped to see you go out with handcuffs on.”
“Might I venture to ask why you cherish these delightful sentiments
towards me?” he enquired.
“It’s a pleasure to enlighten you—you unscrupulous ruffian.”
“Please, Geraldine!” Tydvil said gently. “I didn’t ask you for flattery.
Just a little information on so trifling a matter.”
“My reason for trying to have you arrested arises from a visit I had from
a certain high moral authority just before you came in,” she retorted
with venom in her voice.
“Oh!” Tydvil straightened up. “So,” he thought, “that accounted for Amy’s
presence in the lane.”
“I see you understand,” she went on.
“My dear Geraldine! There must be some mistake, surely.”
“Mistake indeed!” She tossed her head. “Who was it assured Mrs. Jones
that I was a perjurer? Where did she get the notion that I am a designing
unprincipled creature who lures men into disgrace? Who told her that
Billy’s black eye was a pure fabrication? Who led her to believe that I
am a bright pink, if not a scarlet, woman? Who prompted…?”
“But, Geraldine!” Tydvil broke in. “Surely you don’t think…”
“Think!” she interrupted. “No! I know! Tyddie, you’ve even less moral
scruple than your noble friend.” She glared at Nicholas. “I know what
happened as though I’d been there. As Billy, you had to save yourself,
and you—you horror!—You sacrificed me to do it.”
Tydvil’s head was bowed to the blast.
“Look me in the eye and deny it! You can’t, and you know you can’t.”
Tydvil turned to Nicholas, who shrugged his shoulders and laughed.
“Oh! You’re a lovely pair!”
Tydvil looked up guiltily at the figure of Nemesis that towered over him.
“Was it a very tough ordeal, Geraldine?” he asked sympathetically.
“You admit it?” she demanded.
“I was in a terribly tough corner, Geraldine,” he pleaded.
She looked from one to the other. Even Nicholas had the grace to look
ashamed. They looked so like a pair of guilty schoolboys that she
laughed, and relented.
“Now you listen to me—both of you! If I have any more trouble from you
two I’ll make you both sorry for it if it takes the rest of my life to do
it.”
“I’m really sorry, Geraldine,” Tydvil urged penitently,
“And so you should be,” she retorted. “And I warn you, if that high moral
authority favours me with any more of her personal views on my character
there is going to be a scandal in C. B. & D. I’ll live up to the
reputation you have given me, my friend. She can consider herself lucky
that she is not a total wreck now.”
“But surely, Geraldine, you wouldn’t use violence?” Tydvil’s voice
sounded more hopeful than shocked.
“Wouldn’t I?” the fiery girl retorted. “She said things to me that no
woman can say to another. Any woman between a duchess and charwoman would
have been justified in peeling her for half what she said to me.”
“Geraldine! Geraldine!” Tydvil admonished, laughing.
“You can put it down to my self-restraint and self-respect that she
didn’t get out of the office in her blushes; and I won’t answer for
myself another time.” Voice, attitude, and eyes testified to Amy’s narrow
escape from a truly sensational experience.
“And so,” said Tydvil without trying to hide his amusement, “you took it
out of me.”
“I did my best,” she agreed.
“You put me in an awful hole, you demon.”
“I’m so glad,” she replied with simple candour.
“What am I to do with her?” Tydvil turned to appreciative Nicholas.
“In your place,” advised Nicholas, “my policy would be fervent
conciliation.”
Tydvil laughed, “Make it pax, Geraldine. You put a nasty one over me, so
that ought to make us square.”
Her wrath had died down, and with a chuckle she said, “Pax it is—but it
should be a lesson to you I’m not to be trifled with.”
“Bless you, my children,” from Nicholas.
Geraldine swung round on him. “As for you, I don’t appreciate your
blessing. I don’t know what you are or who you are, but even if you’re
what I believe you to be, I’m not afraid of you, and I’m not done with
you yet!” Her eyes turned to the date block on Tydvil’s table. “No, not
yet!”
Nicholas stood up. “I have too profound an appreciation of your sex, and
of you, to disregard the warning.”
“And I know too much of your sex, and of you, to express much
appreciation of either,” she said defiantly.
“Let me try to win a little by offering a sincere apology, for the trick
I played on you.”
“Didn’t someone say, ‘Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes’?” Nicholas’s smile
was friendly. “I’m no Greek, Geraldine, and I really mean I am sorry.”
She looked at him speculatively. “I believe you mean it, and I accept,
but,” she smiled, “don’t ask me to trust you. It is still war.”
“Fair exchange,” he laughed, “you accept my apology and I accept your
challenge.”
“Wait a moment,” she said, “Tydvil says you are a sportsman.”
He nodded. “I try to be one.”
“Then, if it’s war, play fair,” she challenged.
“You mean?” He was frankly interested.
“Fair play and no miracles,” she demanded.
Nicholas laughed heartily. “I might have expected something like that.”
“I only want an equality of weapons,” she persisted.
“You overestimate my strength,” Nicholas shook his head. “You may not
recognise it, but you are better armed than I. Even I can’t afford to
give anything away in fighting Geraldine Brand.”
“Very well!” she said decisively, “then it’s no quarter.”
“And the prize?” he glanced towards Tydvil.
Geraldine nodded. “Since he won’t help himself.” Then to Tydvil, “You’re
an unscrupulous creature, and don’t think I’m doing it on your account,
I’m only doing it to teach Mr. Senior a lesson.’
“Oh! Don’t mind me, Geraldine,” laughed Tydvil. “I seem to have no say in
the arrangement.”
“None whatever!” she agreed. “You’re a pawn, a bone of contention—in
fact, you don’t count.”
“You must agree, Tydvil, that she is quite candid with us both,” said
Nicholas.
“You see,” she turned to Nicholas, “if I can cancel that Bill, I’ll
settle my account with you, and Tydvil will get all he deserves by living
with Mrs. Jones—so he doesn’t escape much.”
“What a woman!” There was sincere admiration in Nicholas’s voice.
“Now we understand one another, anyway,” she said, moving towards the
door. “I have work to do.”
As she closed the door behind her the two men looked from it to one
another.
Said Tydvil, “Cheerful child! Isn’t she?”
Nicholas grinned. “It may, interest you to know, that despite that tirade
against you, she is as loyal to you as steel, and she likes you
immensely.”
“Somehow, I think you’re right,” smiled Tydvil.
“And,” Nicholas added, “I think Mrs. Jones would be very well advised to
keep clear of her.”
Tydvil nodded. “I’ll do what I can, but that is not much. I wonder,” he
said thoughtfully, “just what Geraldine is up to.”
“In a long, long experience,” Nicholas replied, “one of the very few
things I have learned about women is that it is unprofitable to predict
what they will do.”
“But can she do anything?” Tydvil asked.
“I doubt it,” Nicholas answered, “but…” He paused, sunk in thought.
“Perhaps their Creator does understand women, but they have given me so
much trouble, and deceived me so often that I sometimes think they are
the greatest of my punishments.”
“A punishment in disguise,” suggested Tydvil. “Perhaps,” Nicholas
reflected. “But I have never married.”
“Misogamist!” laughed Tydvil.
“No, just scared,” replied Nicholas.
“Scared! You!” Tydvil was astonished.
“Aye, Tydvil, scared. How does it go—‘Fools rush in where angels fear to
tread’?”
“Angels?”
“Same thing,” said Mr. Senior.
On the following morning Tydvil handed Geraldine a cheque on his private
account with instructions to cash it herself and to draw the money in
��100 notes. Even the well-trained Geraldine could scarce forbear to raise
her eyebrows when she read the amount. Tydvil, watching her face, saw
the curiosity that she could not hide.
“That, my dear Geraldine, is conscience money, since you are so curious
about it,” he said.
“You must have a blotchy conscience,” replied Miss Brand, regarding the
figures with awe.
“Well, not so blotchy as your censorious mind imagines,” he grinned.
“Well,” she returned, “all I can say is that its tenderness does you
credit, if it isn’t blotchy.”
“It’s a debt I owe—with interest added—to my very dull youth.” Tydvil
smiled.
When Geraldine returned with the notes Tydvil dismissed her, and spent
some time in making them into a neat parcel.
That night Miss Elsie Wilson received a small package addressed to her at
the Casino Club. In it was a brief message from Basil Williams regretting
that he had been called from Melbourne on urgent affairs and was unable
to say goodbye. He begged she would accept the enclosure with his best
wishes for her future.
Thereafter the Casino Club knew her no more. Within a fortnight Elsie had
established a business which prospered under her own shrewd management.
But she never knew why Craddock, Burns and Despard were always so kind
and considerate to her in her dealings with them.
As the days passed, Geraldine began to detest the sight of the calendar
on her office table. She hated to date her letters. Both clamoured that
October was closing and November was at hand. When she had defied
Nicholas, it was in the hope that inspiration would come to her. During
the days that followed, she formed and rejected a score of plans. Billy,
she found, was concerned, but hopeless. Tydvil was unconcerned and
indifferent. What a nuisance men were!
Although she became more and more worried as time went on, Tydvil’s
disregard for its passage exasperated her. Every morning seemed to make
him younger and more irresponsible. The head of C. B. & D. behaved like
twenty-five years old, instead of the thirty-five he really was. The
change was all the more marked because the old Tydvil was nearer fifty in
outlook and deportment.
It was not that he neglected his work. He entered into it with even, a
greater zest than before. Indeed, he actually worked harder in the
office, so as to find time for play. And play he did, with an even
greater zest than he worked. But the dull, priggish and stolid Tydvil had
vanished. Their morning session for the mail and dictation had become a
lively, and to both, and enjoyable hour. He teased Geraldine with the
mischief of a schoolboy. He interspersed the official letters with sheer
nonsense.
Almost every afternoon by four o’clock, Nicholas would stroll into the
office, and perhaps for ten minutes Geraldine’s ears would catch sounds
of mirth. Then they
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